Edinburgh Castle Plaque – Repair and Restore Broken Engagement Gift

So this is something that I’ve really wanted to fix for some time but had pretty much given up on.

This was a gift that was received broken in the mail and despite both the sender and the receiver trying to claim compensation, it was never forthcoming.  It is a framed plaque of Edinburgh Castle that is supposed to hang on the wall but due to the damage, it never has.  I did try to glue it back together at the time but the damage was still very obvious especially around the blue sky where the ceramic is much thinner and that’s where most of the damage occurred.

Here’s a photo of the back to show exactly where it was broken and in how many places. I recently found it again when I cleared out a shed and wondered if I could do something with it to make it usable and perhaps change the appearance completely – ie stop trying to make it look as it was, and look at it in a new way. It did actually occur to me to paint everything black and make it very dark and gothic looking using metallic waxes.

So I started by completely covering the sky area with texture paste which in this instance felt a lot like filling in cracks with polyfilla, and maybe I could have just used polyfilla lol.  I needed to make it a smooth surface again and hide all the cracks.

Then when it was dry, I lightly sanded it back to make it smooth. At this point I had a choice – did I still want to go all dark and gothic or did I want to keep it light and bright?

I went with light and bright!  It was really because of the sky, once I started putting that blue liquid acrylic on there it just had to go in that direction.  I completely repainted the entire plaque using liquid acrylics but the result is a much brighter version, with more vivid colours, and I got rid of the autumnal look of the trees too.  Then it was time for the frame, I didn’t want to leave it just plain brown so I painted it with Plum Preserves Metallique paint and I just love how it turned out.  Now instead of hiding in a box in the shed, it can be on display in the house.

PROJECT RECIPE:

Finnabair black gesso, modelling paste, white gesso,
Sandpaper
Liquid acrylics Avocado Green, Emerald, Turquoise, Blue, Snow White, Ink Black, Burnt Sienna,
Metallique paint Plum Preserves